Ads Gone Bad: Dolce & Gabbana proves (yet again) that sex sells

Posted Sep 6th 2008 12:00PM by Tom Barlow
Filed under: Consumer Experience, Marketing and Advertising, Sears Holdings (SHLD)

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

One could question whether there could be an ad so controversial as to harm the fortunes of haute couture shops. Certainly, noted fashion house Dolce & Gabbana has tested that hypothesis with an ongoing series of sex-charged ads, one of which caused an Italian minister to accuse it of inciting gang rape.

That particular shot, in which a nubile young lady is pinned down by her wrists by a virile male under the interested gaze of several other men, was singled out for its intimation of violence toward women. Other ads by B&G have heavily homoerotic content, and one, a tableau of soldiers posed around a particularly attractive male with a bullet hole in his forehead, has even been thought by some to play on the naughty joys of necrophilia.

The question we pose here, though, is not just what ads brought public vilification, but how those ads damaged the bottom line of the companies for which they advertised. In Dolce & Gabanna's case, the company has seemed to thrive on such controversy. In fact, the New York Times commented on the apparent inconsistency between these edgy ads and the increasingly romantic style of their offerings. The company, founded for $1,000 in 1982, racked up $1.4 billion in sales and $200 million in profits last year.

Given these figures, perhaps companies such as Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) should consider some necrophilia advertising!

When it comes to ads like this
Surely they help the bottom line.	160 (21.4%)
They hurt the bottom line, deservedly so.	281 (37.6%)
Who cares -- can I see it again?	306 (41.0%)

See other examples of Ads Gone Bad.

Tags: Ads Gone Bad, bad ads, controversial ads, Dolce and Gabbana, Sears, sex and advertising, sex in advertising, SHLD, sleazy ads, when ads go bad

Print this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-06-2008 @ 12:26AM

Cher said...

Mmmm .. provocative, sexy, arousing and made me want to run out and buy that DANG mannequin in the window! ;)

9-07-2008 @ 7:10PM

Wanda said...

Where do they show these ads? I have never seen any of them on stations where I live. No, I don't live in a small town, I live in the Tampa Bay area.

10-26-2008 @ 6:35AM

Maggie said...

Too funny Cher, but yeah, "I'd hit it." LOL We were supposed to be looking at clothes??

10-26-2008 @ 7:09AM

kathie said...

Mmmmmm......I wanted to play it over and over!

10-26-2008 @ 12:07PM

sofiaroma said...

This ads have been run in Europe,I went to Florence to visit my family in 2006 and ad of the locker room photo featuring part the Italian soccer team in Dolce and Gabbana underwear was all over town on huge billboards. I thought this is the sexiest photo ever!!!!

When I returned to the USA I put the same photo on my locker at work and my coworkers including my boss were offended by it,I had to take it down. Most people in the USA does not understand the beauty of the body as art but only sees it as a sexual tool. Very sad...

10-26-2008 @ 12:12PM

PETE said...

What I don't understand is why the reader was not given the opportunity, as in the previous ads, to state if this...along with other ads such as this....go beyond the pale merely to make a buck. Because, personally, though ads such as this one does not offend or jaundice my adult sensibilities, I still regard that there are children out there who's mental development may be skewed by them. Therefore, I say - except to those egocentrics to which no amount or type of appeal would impact on them - that the rest of us ought to insure children are shielded from our grownup fantasies. For I repeat, I am not against this ad; or against any other ad that is geared towards adults. But, that is, so long as it is kept from putting an additional another dollar into the purse of an already wealthy individual by way of seeping the ads into the heads of tots and teens; thereby enticing developing minds to omit the simple joys of being and thinking like children and turning them into harden commodities.

10-27-2008 @ 10:47AM

hazmaire said...

I might watch it in the bedroom just to give me a little umph, But my filter would filter it out on my TV. kids you know.

10-30-2008 @ 12:26PM

REDZ said...

WOW WHERE DO THEY RUN THESE ADS I NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE AND I LIVE IN NEW YORK BUT IT IS A LITTLE TOO MUCH FOR ME OR TV

11-19-2008 @ 12:16PM

Char said...

I didn't see this ad, but I was offended by their homosexual ads. A woman running and then a man running, and you think they running toward each other, but turns out she meets a beautiful woman and kisses and he meets a beautiful man and kisses. I don't consider myself homophobic, but that turned me off. I'm not buying any more Dulce and Gabbana